Judicial elections offer 2 choices

On local judges, Scott Maxwell says keep one and toss the other.

Once again, Floridians are being asked to vote on the “merit retention” of Florida judges.

If you don’t have a clue what that means, you’re not alone.

Basically, you get to decide whether certain judges keep their jobs.

“Great,” you might be thinking. “Now I just have one other question: How in tarnation am I supposed to decide that?”

It’s hard. And usually, judges get reappointed without any fuss. In fact, in Florida’s entire history of merit-retention votes, no judge has ever been kicked off the bench.

This year, however, there is a call to boot one recently appointed judge — mainly because he’s unqualified to be there.

That judge is Eric Eisnaugle, a former Republican legislator from Orlando whom Gov. Rick Scott appointed last year to the state’s second-highest court level. There, Eisnaugle now renders opinions on rulings from other judges – even though he has never been a judge himself and had relatively little experience as a lawyer.

Perhaps that’s why members of the Florida Bar — when asked to rate judges on criteria such as integrity, legal knowledge and impartiality — gave Eisnaugle the lowest rating in the state.

This year, the average score was 85 percent. Eisnaugle scored 66 percent. In the past three decades, only one judge has scored lower — and that judge resigned his seat instead of seeking re-election. (He, too, was a legislator who politicked his way to the bench.)

Because of all this, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel’s editorial board recently did what it never had before — urged voters not to reappoint Eisnaugle, describing his appointment as a “conspicu-

ously political payoff” for a man with “thin credentials.”

The board gave a strong endorsement to the only other judge Central Floridians will consider in a retention vote this year: Supreme Court Justice Alan Lawson, another conservative Scott appointee, but one who came with judicial experience and widespread respect.

Bar attorneys gave Lawson a solid 87 percent approval rating.

So how unqualified is Eisnaugle? Well, consider this: Of the 10 other jurists on the Fifth District Court of Appeal, eight had previous experience as judges. The other two had been attorneys for so long, they graduated law school around the time Eisnaugle, 41, was born.

Another telling detail: While appeals-court applicants fill out forms that say how many times they have appeared in court “per month,” Eisnaugle had so little experience, he had to change the application to say “per year.” His answer: “3 to 5 times” annually.

So Scott appointed him to oversee other judges (which he’d never been) and activity in courtrooms (in which he’d rarely ventured).

You can see how that might lead to job-performance issues.

Why Eisnaugle? Well, for one thing, he’s young. Scott has tried to stack the judiciary with jurists who can remain there for decades — unless voters say otherwise. (This retention vote is the only check citizens have.)

Also, as a legislator, Eisnaugle endeared himself to many powerful interests. He sponsored one bill requested by timeshare companies that made it harder for buyers to get out of flawed contracts and co-sponsored the infamous NRA-backed “Pop Tart” bill that guaranteed schoolchildren the right to eat gun-shaped breakfast treats without getting into trouble. (Florida Statute 1006.07 now grants special protections to any child interested in "brandishing a partially consumed pastry.")

Eisnaugle also mounted a failed campaign for House Speaker and backed bills championing lower taxes, school recess and, ironically, efforts to undermine the judiciary ... where he now makes $169,554 a year.

Former Orange-Osceola Chief Judge Belvin Perry is sympathetic to voters struggling to cast informed votes. Ideally, Perry said, news organizations would devote more attention to day-to-day court rulings, so that citizens could evaluate judges the same way they evaluate politicians.

Still, Perry encouraged voters to pay attention to the Bar survey, saying that, while it isn’t perfect, “that’s really the only thing they have to evaluate.”

Eisnaugle did not respond to a request for comment. But he could theoretically argue that, even though his score was historically low, a majority of Bar respondents — 66 percent — said he should be retained.

(Of course, it’s also worth noting that, among attorneys who said they knew Eisnaugle’s work best, he earned only 59 percent confidence. His score was actually boosted to 66 when the Bar included votes from attorneys who said they had only “limited knowledge” of his work.)

In some ways, this is like a child who brought home a 66 on his final report card. Technically, it’s passing. You, the parent, have to decide whether it’s good enough to reward.